COVER STORY

Doubleheader to open season with flurry of fanfares

Related Items

Columbus Symphony

SHOWTIMES » 8 tonight and Saturday night
TICKETS » tonight: $24.75 to $68, or $22.50 to $61.50 for senior citizens, $14 to
$35.50 for children 14 and younger; Saturday: $23 to $68, or $21 to $61.50 for senior citizens, $13
to $35.50 for children

Saturday: the Pops Series opener, “Opera to Broadway,” an operatic and musical-theater
showcase.

Both concerts will be at the Ohio Theatre and be led by Music Director Jean-Marie Zeitouni.
Plenty of performers will participate: 88 in the symphony, 135 in the Columbus Symphony Chorus, 34
from the Columbus Children’s Choir and three guest soloists.

“The original idea was to open the pops season with ‘Opera to Broadway,’ ” he said. “But, since
it was right at the beginning of the season, I wanted to add an event that would enlarge the whole
season — to create a big bang, if you will, that would have all forces: vocal soloists, chorus and
the children’s chorus, and the whole orchestra.”

Carmina Burana, written by German composer Carl Orff in the mid-1930s, fills the bill
perfectly, Zeitouni said.

The cantata is based on a medieval Latin poetry collection of the same name.

“
Carmina Burana is a piece about life that covers all aspects of life — from love, from
childhood, from spirituality, from even drunkenness,” he said. “Everything is there.”

Carmina Burana is best- known for its “O Fortuna.” The driving, full-throated first
movement, which is reprised as the finale, has been appropriated extensively for films, TV shows,
commercials — and even sports teams.

“But there is also some very refined, very light, very fresh, very intimate moments in . . . (Carmina),” Zeitouni said. “It is music that I want to say is primitive in the sense that
it speaks about very profound energy.

“The poetry is sometimes very personal. . . . It mostly is the variety in it that appeals to me.”<
/p>

Orff included two movements calling for young voices. The New World Singers, whose members are
10 to 16 and which is the highest ensemble of the children’s choir, will perform.

“This will be the third time to do
Carmina Burana with the Columbus Symphony over the course of 25 years that we’ve been
singing with them,” said Sandra Mathias, artistic director of the choir.

The ensemble has been rehearsing since summer, with the goal of singing the passages from
memory.

“I like the children to sing from memory when they are doing major orchestral works or
performing with the orchestra because then their eyes can be on the conductor,” Mathias said. “They
can communicate with the conductor better, watching what the orchestra is doing.”

Tonight’s concert will open with
bluecathedral, a gentle, introspective work written by Philadelphia composer Jennifer Higdon in
1999 that celebrates life — as
Carmina Burana does but from a different perspective.

“Because
Carmina is a music from the earth, coming from the roots, coming from the sweat of the
human people,” Zeitouni said, “and Higdon’s
cathedral is a music of the sky; it’s ethereal music.”

Three guest soloists will perform in
Carmina Burana as well as on Saturday in “Opera to Broadway,” which will feature the
symphony chorus.

Zeitouni, a Canadian, is welcoming two other Canadians as soloists: soprano Aline Kutan and
tenor Frederic Antoun. They will be joined by baritone Keith Phares.

Engaging soloists for multiple events is increasingly common.

“All of the vocal soloists are OK with that — in fact, more than OK,” Zeitouni said. “I think
they are thrilled they are able to perform in two different concerts.”

Phares, 36, of Richmond, Va., said this is his first two-part project.

Carmina Burana is part of his repertoire; in the past year, he has performed it with the
San Francisco Symphony and the Virginia Symphony.

“It petrified me at first,” he said. “Now it actually feels pretty comfortable; it still feels
scary but in a healthy way.”

Phares said he is focused on opera but added: “I love any opportunity I get to sing musical
theater because that’s how I got into singing. It’s a real treat.”

On Saturday, operatic selections will include the introduction to
Romeo and Juliet by Charles Gounod; the “Humming Chorus” from
Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini; and the “Anvil Chorus” from
Il Trovatore by Giuseppe Verdi.

Broadway will be represented by numbers from
The Sound of Music,
Sweeney Todd,
Oklahoma! and
The Phantom of the Opera, among others.

At the end, opera and Broadway “all merge

together with (Leonard) Bernstein’s
Candide; that was the idea, to see that Broadway and opera (are) not so far apart,”
Zeitouni said.

For one to fully appreciate the capabilities of the orchestra will require the entire season, he
said.

Even so, “I think those first two programs give a very good idea of how an orchestra can
interact — how it can play different, more contemporary, less contemporary repertoire; accompany
the voices; and be also a virtuoso instrument in itself.”